Facebook is an incredible innovator, but one of its greatest strengths is its ability to absorb – the less charitable might say copy – its competitors’ best features. We saw it with Twitter and status updates; with Foursquare and Places; with Pinterest and last autumn’s Collections tool; and most recently Snapchat and the Poke app.

That’s fine when startups are nipping at your heels, but does that work when you’re competing against the tech industry’s biggest platforms?

This week, Path, the social networking app, faced criticism for storing users’ information after Arun Thampi, a developer, discovered his iPhone’s address book was uploaded to Path’s servers without his permission.

Research In Motion, the company behind the BlackBerry smartphone, is rolling out a new system that aims to help its corporate customers maintain and manage the security of their employees’ BlackBerrys as well as rival devices such as the iPhone, according to The Wall Street Journal. The new system, the first from RIM to incorporate competitors’ products, is seen as a tacit acknowledgment that an increasing number of employees are calling on their employers to allow work e-mails to be pushed to smartphones other than the Blackberry. Read more

Downloads of Android’s apps overtook those of Apple’s iOS apps in the second quarter of 2001, Business Insider reports. According to figures from ABI Research, the market shares of Android and iOS were 44% and 31% respectively. However, Apple still gets more downloads per user than Android. Read more

As the deadline for applications for the latest Y Combinator start-up showcase nears, GeekWire reports that survey of 52 venture capital firms raised $1.72bn during the third quarter, a 52 per cent decrease in dollar commitments on the same time last year. The survey, by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association, says the latest total is the lowest for eight years.

Mobile devices now amount to almost 7% of all US web traffic, Apple Insider says. According to a report by comScore, Apple’s iOS mobile operating system takes up a 58.5% slice of all mobile traffic, with the iPad now accounting for more traffic than iPhones. Read more

Android is expected to surpass Apple in application downloads for the first time, according to research seen by CNET. A study by Ovum has found that Google’s mobile system is set to notch up 8.1bn app downloads this year, compared with 6bn for Apple’s iOS devices. Read more

Steve Jobs appeared at the opening of Apple’s Worldwide Developer conference on Monday with what he said was a new approach to personal computing that had been ten years in gestation: the iCloud.

The service is based on an idea that Mr Jobs said he had a decade ago, and which involved computers becoming personal hubs. The iCloud will store all of a users’ content, and push it to all of that person’s Apple devices: “iCloud is integrated with your apps, so everything happens automatically.”

In an attempt to stem online piracy, Universal and Sony Music, two of Britain’s biggest record labels, are to make their new singles available for sale on the day they first hit the airwaves, PaidContent reports. The music companies hope that by being able to buy songs immediately, impatient music lovers will stop copying songs from radio broadcasts online.

TechCrunch reports on findings by Asmyco, the Helsinki-based app developer and industry analysis advisory firm, that more than 60 Apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold - up from 10 Apps downloaded for every iPhone/iPod touch in 2008.

Google’s momentum in smartphones is not likely to stop at just overtaking Apple’s iPhone in terms of global sales, according to analysts from Taipei-based Digitimes Research, who are predicting that Android sales will jump to number two above Research In Motion’s BlackBerry before the end of the year.

Gartner, the research group, last week said Android’s global share in smartphones had jumped from 1.8 per cent a year ago to 17.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2010. This put it ahead of Apple’s iOS operating system, which had a 14.2 per cent share, but still behind RIM’s 18.2 per cent global market share. Read more

Tech Blog

Analysis & reviews

About this blog

Blog guide

Welcome. If you have yet to register on FT.com you will be asked to do so before you begin to read FT blogs. However, our posts remain free.

Richard Waters, Tim Bradshaw, Hannah Kuchler and Sarah Mishkin in the FT's San Francisco bureau share their views - plus tech insights from Robert Cookson and Chris Nuttall in London.

Tags

Archive

About the authors

Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.

Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years. He reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby from 2004 to 2013, before returning to London.

Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.

Robert Cookson is the FT's digital media correspondent in London. He
covers digital enterprise in media, from the music industry to local newspapers and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. A former Hong Kong markets correspondent, he is interested in the interplay
between old media and new technologies.

Hannah Kuchler writes about technology and Silicon Valley from the FT's San Francisco bureau. She covers social media including Facebook and Twitter and the dark and mysterious world of cybersecurity. Hannah has worked for the FT in London, Hong Kong and New York, reporting on everything from British politics to the Chinese internet.

Sarah Mishkin in a correspondent in San Francisco, where she covers payments, e-commerce, and political news on the West Coast. Prior to California, she has worked as an FT reporter in New York, London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and most recently in Taiwan, where she covered Chinese internet companies, semiconductors, and tech supply chains.